The means of getting Divine Grace are: Bhakti (devotion),Prapathi (surrender), Niyama (ethical
discipline), Vicharana(enquiry) and Deeksha (determination).
When you succeed in these tests, you will experience the grace of the Divine.
Devotion should manifest itself in every action. Everything done out of love
for God and as an offering to God becomes devotion. The devotee is filled with
love and shares the love with all the others. The nine different forms of
worship are only means to cultivate devotion. But the goal of all of them is to
experience oneness with the Divine. Prapathi means total surrender -
offering everything to the Divine. The sense of ego separates the individual
from the Divine. When the individual offers everything to God, the barrier of
ego is removed. Of all diseases to which man is prone, the disease arising
from ahamkara (ego) is the most deadly. The only panacea for this
disease is surrender to the Will of the Divine
Do you know the mantra Soham? If we use it with the breath, So is inhale and Ham is exhale and together is it OM.
If we inhale it is O and after we exhale it is M, in that very moment is only the body left until we take in the breath again and it is energy. If we are only in the body we know from Swami that we are not that. If we know it from Swami it is still theoretical knowledge, only when we make the experience and we feel it in our own body, it is true for us.
Therefore, we can conclude that the divine awareness is awake in the O and it gets to a close in the M, but in the O it goes on forever, together it is Om. Our normal awareness is in the body, the bod dictates out life.
If we get aware of the Soham, the mantra of the breath going on constantly in our awareness, we switch and get aware that we are the O and not the M, not the body and it is pure being, called 'sat' and the knowledge and wisdom we acquire in the divine words and listening carefully is chit and when we absorb it in our own higher self it will be Ananda, Sat-Chit-Ananda.
Our focus is in the body and we live the body if we are not focused on the Soham, the OM and get aware that we are not the body, not the mind, but pure consciousness or the higher self and the 'I am I', but it has to be realized, cognized and the method to get there is contemplation and nobody seems to know about contemplation, there is a vague idea about meditation, but contemplation it totally unknown and it is all what Swami is talking about. They go on adoring his form thinking that is what he wants, when I reality he talks about contemplation only and they don't understand it. From whatever side we look at it we get back to contemplation.
The means of getting Divine grace are: Bhakti (devotion),Prapathi (surrender), Niyama (ethical discipline), Vicharana(enquiry) and Deeksha (determination).
What is devotion in one sentence, definition. Is it love for God? Is it adoring his form or divinity in the heart?
What is surrender? If we all sing together and we hear only one voice and that is divine and we melt in that experience in love for the divinity we are worshipping in the devotional song, that is surrender, because there is only one voice and all are one, there is no ego, no individuality, nothing but that oneness and that is our focus and as long as we focus on that oneness, we surrender.
Do you know Niyama, ethical discipline. That is copied from the Wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niyama
Five Niyamas
In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the Niyamas are the second limb of the eight limbs of Yoga. Sadhana Pada Verse 32 lists the niyamas as:
1. Śauca: purity, clearness of mind, speech and body
2. Santoṣa: contentment, acceptance of others and of one's circumstances as they are, optimism for self
3. Tapas: persistent meditation, perseverance, austerity
4. Svādhyāya: study of self, self-reflection, introspection of self's thoughts, speeches and actions
5. Īśvarapraṇidhāna: contemplation of the Ishvara (God/Supreme Being, Brahman, True Self, Unchanging Reality)
Ten Niyamas
In the diverse traditions and historical debate within Hinduism, some texts suggest a different and expanded list ofniyamas. For example, the Shandilya and Varuha Upanishads, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, verses 552 to 557 in Book 3 of the Tirumandhiram of Tirumular suggest ten niyamas, in the sense of positive duties, desirable behaviors and discipline. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika lists the ten niyamas in the following order, in verse 1.18,
1. Tapas: persistence, perseverance in one's purpose, austerity
2. Santoṣa: contentment, acceptance of others and of one's circumstances as they are, optimism for self
3. Āstika: faith in Real Self (jnana yoga, raja yoga), belief in God (bhakti yoga), conviction in Vedas/Upanishads (orthodox school)
4. Dāna: generosity, charity, sharing with others
5. Īśvarapūjana: worship of the Ishvara (God/Supreme Being, Brahman, True Self, Unchanging Reality)
6. Siddhānta vakya śrāvaṇa: listening to the ancient scriptures
7. Hrī: remorse and acceptance of one's past, modesty, humility
8. Mati: think and reflect to understand, reconcile conflicting ideas
9. Japa: mantra repetition, reciting prayers or knowledge
Just reading it we get aware of the first points, purity and contentment, acceptance of others… and Tapas, persistent meditation, study of self, constant reflection and contemplation on Ishvara (divine truth).
In the ten Niyamas we have also sharing with others, listening to ancient scriptures, acceptance of the past, think and reflect to understand, mantra repetition and rituals.
How can we in the West get to the conclusion that it is only love? How is that love if all that is part of it? And what foolishness that we think we know that love?
And what about vicharana? It is enquiry into truth, all those questions about 'who am I' and 'I am that' and where do we go and where do we come from, it is the questions Swami asked.
How can we inquire into truth if we don't listen to the divine words as he is truth?
Different traditions and sects treat diksa in various ways. Tantra mentions five types of initiation or diksa: initiation by a ritual or samaya-diksa; sparsa-diksa is an initiation by touch and is done without a ritual; vag-diksais done by word or mantra; sambhavi-diksa is arising from perception of external appearance of the guru;mano-diksa is when initiation is performed in the mind.For ISKCON members first diksa, or harinama-diksainitiation, is performed as part of a fire sacrifice where grains, fruit, and ghee are placed on an open fire of the sacrifice.In the tradition of Lahiri Mahasaya, initiation into Kriya Yoga is given as diksa.[8] The Bengali saint Anandamayi Ma often gave sparśa dīkṣā (divine touch) or drik diksa (through her look), in which she would bestow śaktipāt (divine grace).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diksha
When you succeed in these tests, you will experience the grace of the Divine. Devotion should manifest itself in every action.
If we succeed all these tests …
How can we live in the naive and simple believe that we know love and God because we have met the avatar and that is enough to pass the tests to be happy every after, it is about the most naive attitude we can meet on a spiritual path.
Everything done out of love for God and as an offering to God becomes devotion. The devotee is filled with love and shares the love with all the others.
That is why instead of love we find often nothing but difficulties, there is no idea about pure love, or better only the idea of it, but not the experience and it is only true when we have had the experience of it and there is arguing going on and no awareness of the different states like Tamas, Rajas and Sathva and that means if it is rajas and passion we stay alone as he said in the dream and what when it is tamas, we begin to hide and don't want to see anybody anymore?
The nine different forms of worship are only means to cultivate devotion.
And now he talks even about the nine different means of worship, do you know?
Nine different worships to cultivate only devotion and that is only one of all those tests we need to pass.
But the goal of all of them is to experience oneness with the Divine.
That is the goal, to experience oneness with the Divine. If we sing and listen to the singers and hear only one and it feel like Darshan, that is the goal in our own experience.
If we see only one because we are focused on oneness and not because we imagine it, there is no ego, because we are all one and we feel good in it, because we know it is the divine presence, the ego dissolves in the one, but we have to keep the focus, the ego comes back.
Prapathi means total surrender - offering everything to the Divine. The sense of ego separates the individual from the Divine. When the individual offers everything to God, the barrier of ego is removed.
The offering to God is present in the singing, if we just sing with all others in the awareness of the oneness. If we sing and listen to our own voice only and focus on the tune we are not aware of the oneness. If we are aware of the oneness, we don't listen to our voice, but to all voices and they all melt in that inner experience of the divine presence.
Facing that reality the clash with someone some time ago feel like such violence or is it disease?
If we are not aware of the oneness in all, it is disease which results from the ego, so it must be a disease and it makes feel sick, but really sick on a level sick that we nearly felt like throwing up or never want to see that guy anymore, but I will have to anyhow.
But how it is to feel it, we have to attend a meeting no matter how much we dislike it and we go anyhow. There are the conflicts in the air we fee and how will we feel on the road while driving, thinking everything is fine, but nothing is really, the truth is not uphold, but something else and until now we didn't even know that it was about truth not being upheld.
Do we know the feelings as we are looking forward to that meeting, thinking already now when it will be over as the tension is that big, it cannot get worse as it already is and we think about what to tell and what not to tell etc.
Where is the joy of it? In telling myself there are others and it could turn into something good and not bad, it is just trying to motivate myself to go and do it, to go for it anyhow and at the same time I am enervated that I don't enjoy it and take precautions in my mind what I will do if it gets that bad again, just stand up and leave, I did it already once, I took my things and left the room.
It means more or less looking forward to such a meeting and being upset the way we feel is no fun and if we try to make ourselves feel better, it is a lie. If it gets too bad actually and it could very well be that it would be self-corrected from the inside or if the man who comes in our dreams to awake us would tell me not to go, for whatever reason, I would not attend. If it gets worse as it already is, it will not happen, not for me. If there is inner self-correction and once he said, it is passion, stay alone and if it is not possible to stay alone or they don't let us alone and even call, that is no go. And nobody knows the difference between passion, Rajas and Tamas, ignorance, and nobody asks a question about it and my explanation if it is, it is tamas and that it was that violent because he tried in that state to talk, to discuss, to argue, what the hell is in such a mind? It was not possible, for our own self-protection we had to hung up the phone.
Where are we here, in a spiritual jungle? It feels sometimes like that or something like that, just not normal and not the way we should actually feel.
Of all diseases to which man is prone, the disease arising from ahamkara (ego) is the most deadly. The only panacea for this disease is surrender to the Will of the Divine
Why does he tell us it is the most deadly? Here it is not about bliss and happiness and contentment, it is about death and it is really that serious. If we are the divine, we live and are eternal and never die and if we are in that disease of ego we are already dead, the ego is deadly, because we are the body and the body dies.
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